


Pools Among the Rushes

by Vampiric_Charms



Series: Burns Most of All [15]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:38:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiric_Charms/pseuds/Vampiric_Charms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanity is fleeting, and far too malleable to the whims of others.  Or, if it is not <i>sanity</i> that is changing, perhaps it is oneself, transfiguring in ways once thought impossible.</p><p>Set before Mairon's fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pools Among the Rushes

**Author's Note:**

> This short piece is set at some vague point near the end (or beginning, maybe, where it all really starts?) of Mairon's corruption. Read however you wish to interpret, and enjoy!
> 
> (Still taking requests, if you would like to make one!)

“I know you are there.”

Mairon did not bother looking over his shoulder to the archway leading into the corridor as he spoke, instead dipping the tongs clutched around a piece of steel hot from the hearth into a bucket of cool water. It sizzled, steam rising up to curl about his face and shoulders. He held it there for only a moment before pulling it out, dripping and still burning with heat, to inspect the work of his hammer. The head of a trowel, soon to join several already finished.

“I do not know why you feel as though you must lurk in the shadows,” he continued quietly, returning the piece to the bucket, “when I can notice you there quite clearly.”

“I do not understand _how_ ,” Melkor complained with a dramatic sigh, finally stepping into the forge from the hall. He scowled with the heat, though made no mention of it as he leaned against the wall to watch him work as he had been doing before. “Is it a new development, then, this ridiculous sense of yours, or have you always noticed my comings and goings? The other Maiar certainly seem oblivious to me, even when I pass right before them.”

Mairon did not respond to the inquiry when he did not feel equipped enough with the answers himself to do so. In all honesty, it did not seem as if it were a new experience altogether, but rather a familiar one he had simply _rediscovered_ \- this ability to sense the Vala’s energy as he approached. It was not a fully constant thing, though sometimes it was quite strong. Such as just then, barreling off in waves. 

He frowned, unsure, and kept his eyes on his work as he reached into the water with his hands to take out the trowel again. Nearly scalding to the touch, but he could manage. 

Instead of voicing any of this, he said instead, “And I do not understand why you insist on watching me in secrecy. You must admit, it is rather odd behavior.” Melkor opened his mouth to retort, his eyebrows coming together in surprise, but Mairon neatly interrupted whatever he was going to defend himself with. “Bring me that towel, would you? Just there, on the bench next to you.”

Melkor let out a dissatisfied huff, but he looked around to find the towel as requested. He snatched it up and stalked over, and Mairon took it from him with a hand dripping with water. Melkor recoiled, an expression of disgust on his face. “Do not get that on me,” he groused, shaking his fingers and holding his hand away as though he were about to get some yet undiscovered disease. “It’s dirty.”

“It is only water,” Mairon said, a wide smile blossoming across his lips and turning into a little laugh, rumbling high in his chest, as Melkor’s lips continued to curl in repugnance. “It merely has some ash in it, is all.” 

He dried his hands and then ran the towel over the crafted head of the trowel. The smile was still pulled across his face, and Melkor stilled his undignified cavort as their eyes met. 

“ _Now_ who is being ridiculous?” Mairon pointed out, running his fingers idly over the edge of the spade, feeling the pulsing metal under his skin, his gaze still locked with Melkor’s as the energy between them changed so subtly in a way he had almost come to expect. In a way he recognized.

The Vala was silent for a moment, and Mairon could see his eyes shifting back and forth between his own, the blue irises shining in the firelight from the many hearths around them. He felt, almost, in one very short heartbeat, he could catch a fleeting glimpse of images, of deep, hidden thoughts, from Melkor’s spirit, passing to his. Words and emotions, heavy and so very _light_ and full of an echoing freedom that reached to the far corners of his soul, tugging and yearning - 

And then it was _gone_ , so completely, and Mairon nearly reeled back from the loss.

“No,” Melkor said, grinning widely now himself. He did not appear to notice what had just occurred, and he stepped closer again, crowding into Mairon’s space near his bench, oblivious as Mairon blinked and looked down to the metal in his hands. “It is still you, I’d say, who is the ridiculous one.”

Mairon wet his lips and wrapped the towel around the spade, setting both on the table in front of him. His hands lingered there, fingers beginning to tingle with numbness. 

“Perhaps…perhaps you are right.”

Melkor gave him an odd look at the easy surrender as it fell from his tongue into silence. Mairon did not speak again as he took a slow breath, wondering dizzily - and still so calmly, his rational mind maddeningly accepting these thoughts as they came - if his sanity was slipping away through his grasp to fade into the ether with gaping tendrils of his very soul, bleeding pieces of his being he was unable to recapture. 

Or maybe, just _maybe_ , there was something to all of this that he was too afraid to see. And this - this was where his mind halted.

_Impossible._


End file.
